Catching my balance.

December 2009

30 December 2009

We're headed for New England to visit family and friends, and to party like it's 2009. By which I mean that I'm feeling too old to party and will likely fall asleep before the new year is rung in. We have a bit in the valley of pioneers, and then it's off to Boston for visiting, and then backtracking into the Berkshires for more visiting, including a stop at the Black Barn....

that's pretty much my life for the last three months. This week, Mr. P did the laundry (yeay!), but I added bakeshopwrapresentsbakepackagegifts to the usual regiment. I'm kinda looking forward to January....

10 December 2009

On the way back from the latest work trip to the boonies* last night I
stopped at the fabric store to get a zipper for the Christmas dress I'm
making for my niece. At the cutting table the young lady working there
declared to her co-workers that the next day is her 18th birthday and
she was so excited because "only two more years and I can get a gun." I
thought I had misheard her-- the fabric cutting table not really being
my image of the bastion of the NRA. But then she confirmed it, saying,
"I so want a gun!"

One of her coworkers then pointed out that one needs
to be 21 in VA to get a handgun. The young lady didn't see the import of that piece of information. Actually, she said, "Yeah, I know."
Coworker pointed out that that was three years, not two. Girl argued
with her for a while, insisting that it was only two more years, not three. Eighteen, employed, almost armed, and 21-18=3 is beyond her grasp.

Guess
she'll be disappointed on her twentieth birthday. I think I fear for
the rest of us.

Of course, she also declared, loudly, in front of a large group of customers, that someone asked her if she had any kids yet, and that she had responded, pointing animatedly at her crotch, "nothing is coming out of THIS until I'm MARRIED." The other women working at the cutting table stood blinking for a moment. Then one asked if she could take the next customer.

Meanwhile, this trip I got my regular deer season experience of a six year old, after being bidden to draw a picture of something that makes him happy, rendering a scene of himself holding a rifle larger than the body he'd given himself, busily killing forest creatures. In this case a deer, which was rather well drawn-- a good sized buck with a nice rack of antlers. The kid wanted to tell me all about his picture, turning his face towards me, the light glinting off his coke bottle glasses, and happily describing his snuffing out of the animal. I'm thinking that I may want to think twice about hiking in the woods around here, as they appear to be populated by nearly blind, heavily armed six year olds, and potentially armed not terribly bright young women.

* I should point out that, while the Littlest Hunter was in the boonies, the fabric store vigilante was in a suburb of Richmond.